‘Yellowjackets’ Finale Tallies 1.3M Multi-Platform Viewers To Wrap Most Watched Freshman Season On Showtime In 6 Years

Alexandra Del Rosario
·3 min read

Yellowjackets continues to deliver more than just sinister suspense for Showtime as the survival drama brings in more than one million viewers with its cliffhanger-filled season finale.

Showtime revealed that the Yellowjackets Season 1 finale, which aired on Sunday, brought in 1.3 million viewers across its platforms on premiere night, just shy of the season high 1.4 million posted by the penultimate Episode 9. The finale’s viewership is all the more impressive because it was the first Yellowjackets episode not to have a Dexter lead-in.

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Per Showtime, the Yellowjackets finale more than doubled its premiere viewership. The network says streaming viewership for Yellowjackets has quadrupled over the course of the season. Across its various platforms, the Yellowjakcets averaged more than 5 million weekly viewers, the highest for a freshman series on the network in almost six years, since Billions in early 2016.

As previously reported, Yellowjackets also marked the second-most streamed series in Showtime’s history behind Dexter: New Blood which wrapped up just a week prior. Dexter: New Blood drew in 3 million viewers for its finale.

Beyond audience tallies, the series from Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson has garnered a generous amount of buzz. Yellowjackets holds a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes and recently received WGA Award nominations for Best Drama Series and Best New Series, and Critics Choice Awards noms for Best Drama Series and Best Actress in a Drama Series for Melanie Lynskey. Showtime has already handed the drama a Season 2 renewal.

Equal parts survival epic, psychological horror story and coming-of-age drama, Yellowjackets is the saga of a team of wildly talented high school girls soccer players who become the (un)lucky survivors of a plane crash deep in the remote northern wilderness. The series chronicles their descent from a complicated but thriving team to savage clans, while also tracking the lives they’ve attempted to piece back together nearly 25 years later, proving that the past is never really past and what began out in the wilderness is far from over. Season one also stars Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, Tawny Cypress and Christina Ricci.

The series also features Ella Purnell, Samantha Hanratty, Sophie Thatcher, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Nélisse, Steven Krueger and Warren Kole. Eduardo Sanchez directed the finale.

“We are thrilled, to say the least, at the phenomenon that is Yellowjackets,” said Jana Winograde, President of Entertainment, Showtime Networks Inc. “The wild success of the series in viewership and reviews has been exciting, but what’s been most exciting is watching Yellowjackets explode in the collective zeitgeist – seeing the fans’ unbridled passion for the characters, endless theories about the mystery and even their abundant fan art. This kind of show is magic in a bottle, and we want to thank and congratulate Ashley, Bart, Jonathan and the entire cast and crew for the role they played in its creation. It’s a massive understatement to say that we can’t wait for next season.”

Produced for Showtime by studio Entertainment One (eOne), Yellowjackets is executive produced by Lyle, Nickerson and fellow showrunner Jonathan Lisco. Karyn Kusama also executive produced and directed the pilot. Drew Comins of Creative Engine also serves as executive producer.

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